


Five Times Natasha Attempted to Seduce Clint (and the first time she succeeded)

by SneakyHufflepuff



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-18
Updated: 2014-08-18
Packaged: 2018-02-13 15:34:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2155848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SneakyHufflepuff/pseuds/SneakyHufflepuff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What the title says.</p>
<p>From a promt by scribble_myname for the be_compromised promptathon. Natasha has spent five years trying every trick in the book except telling Clint point blank that she loves him, but when he tells someone she's like his sister, that's the last straw.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Natasha Attempted to Seduce Clint (and the first time she succeeded)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to shadadukal for the beta.

1\. 

Clint’s hands felt good on the small of her back as he guided her up the stairs to their hotel room. So did the plush carpet under her bare feet. Everything had been feeling good since the mark had managed to inject her with a cocktail of party drugs. It had also felt really good to drive her fist into his throat, she thought dreamily.

“We’re almost there Nat, you’re going to be okay,” Clint whispered in her ear, playing the part of a husband escorting his drunken wife.

Natasha giggled. Of course she was going to be okay. She leaned into Clint in return.

“You smell good,” she whispered back. 

Or maybe didn’t whisper. She was having a hard time at figuring out sound at that moment.

Clint shrugged her off as he fished in his jacket for the room key. She put her back to the door, and held the key she had pickpocketed earlier over her head.

Clint tried to grab it from her, but she slid it out of his reach.

“Too slow!” she crowed.

“Natasha, please give me the key,” he said, his voice even.

He got crinkles around his eyes when he was worried. She wanted to kiss those worries away. That gave her an idea.

“Kiss me and I’ll give you the key,” she offered.

“Nat, please.”

“Kiss me first,” Natasha demanded.

Silly boy had to think about it. He paused for a long moment.

“Fine,” he said.

She leaned forward and closed her eyes, and he snatched the key out of her hands.

“You didn’t kiss me,” Natasha protested. “That’s not fair.”

He gently moved her away from the door, and opened it, brusque and efficient.

“You’ll thank me in the morning. Now let’s get you some water,” Clint said, moving into the suite.

Natasha pouted at his retreating back. 

“Not fair,” she repeated, softly.

 

2.

Falling into a pool on a mission would earn her a laugh from Clint in most circumstances. Falling into a pool in Canada in November might earn her hypothermia. Fuck, she was cold.

He whisked her inside, and stripped her of her sodden clothes in what felt like seconds. Then, she was wrapped in warm towels as he was drying her off. 

“You okay, Nat?” he asked, looking fixedly at her face.

“I’m good,” she said, as he replaced the towels with warm blankets.

She really was. He had moved quickly enough that she wasn’t in any danger. He turned his back to her and stripped off his clothes, damp and cold from moving her, and she had to stop herself from reaching out and touching him.

“You could come over here and warm me up,” she said, deliberately lowering her voice.

He froze for a second, and then started pulling on a dry set of clothes. 

“I’m glad you’re alright. We should get some sleep.” He didn’t look at her as he spoke.

Natasha felt her mouth open in shock. But he was consistent: he didn’t want to sleep with her when she was vulnerable. That was sweet. She could work with that.

 

3\. 

“Your target is paranoid and thinks he’s smarter than he is,” Maria explained.

Natasha frowned; that was a dangerous combination. 

“You’re going in without backup,” Maria continued. “Your usual covers as consultants would make him even more suspicious, so we need to create new identities.”

“We could pretend to be a married couple on a honeymoon. Honeymooners end up everywhere. No one would question it,” Natasha said.

She was now senior enough at SHIELD to be part of the planning team, instead of just being given missions and covers.

“What about siblings backpacking instead?” Clint offered.

“We don't look enough like siblings,” Natasha protested.

“You don't, but enough spy media uses the romantic cover that I think the siblings cover is less suspicious, to a non-specialist,” Maria said, siding with Clint.

Natasha suppressed the urge to glare at Maria. 

Clint moved quickly, flipping the map of their target’s compound and scanning it. 

“We should hike here, or here.” His blunt fingers pointed to two spots on the map that offered both cover and the possibility of a perfect shot.

She watched him, intently focused on his job and coldly practical, and something clicked. She was in love with him.

“No,” Natasha whispered.

“What was that?” Clint said, looking up from the map, slightly irritated.

“Nothing,” Natasha said, with a smile she didn’t feel.

He raised an eyebrow in a silent _Are you alright?_

She strode over to the map in answer. He was better at reading terrain at a glance, but he might have missed one potential vantage point.

“What about here?” she asked.

He launched into a detailed explanation, and she felt her heart melt as she listened. 

 

4.

She had spent a lot time thinking about how she was going to deal with her newfound love for Clint. He didn’t seem to want her when they were on missions, or when she was vulnerable. It was possible he hadn’t picked up on her being interested in him. He could be incredibly obtuse. She thought the blunt force approach was best.

“Clint,” she called, stepping into the living room from her bedroom.

He was lounging on her couch, reading a magazine as he often did when they were off.

“Yeah, Nat?” he responded, not looking up from his magazine.

“I need your opinion as a guy: which one of these works best?”

She was dressed in a small silk bathrobe, and holding up two lingerie sets, one black and the other bottle green.

Clint looked up, and swallowed, hard. 

She smiled at him innocently.

“You have a date tonight or something?” he asked.

“Or something,” she responded, moving closer with a sway in her hips.

“Honestly, lingerie is overrated,” he told her. 

Clint went back to reading his magazine, face only slightly flushed.

She couldn’t help but appreciate his practicality, even as she felt the sting of rejection. She went back into her bedroom, and slammed the door behind her.

 

5.

Natasha eased her key into the door of Clint’s apartment, juggling two bags of groceries. It was his birthday, and his team was supposed to be taking him out for after work drinks. In the meantime, she was going to cook some of his favorite foods.

“Nat?” Clint said, surprise in his voice.

He was standing in the entryway, a gun held in his hands. He set the gun down, and smiled at her.

“You’re supposed to be out,” she said, feeling foolish as her plans of a surprise dinner evaporated.

“I didn’t feel like celebrating. When you’ve had as many birthdays as I have, it’s just another day.”

His eyes flicked to the groceries in her hand.

“Are you going to make me dinner?” he asked, excited.

“Only if you help,” she answered. 

She set him to cleaning and chopping vegetables, ignoring his whining. She began cleaning the pots and pans she’d need, huffing at the unkempt state of the kitchen. She should have gotten off work early, just to clean the kitchen to the point where it was useable. 

She was tackling a particularly resistant lump of burnt food when jazz music started playing. Clint looked up from the stereo with a smile that made her heart jump.

“No point in cooking without dancing,” he said, holding out his hand.

Her irritation at the state of his kitchen vanishing, she took his hand and he started to spin her. Laughter bubbled out of her, and his answering chuckle made heat swirl through her. She stopped spinning, and he caught her as she swayed, dizzy.

His grey eyes were kind, and filled with laughter, and suddenly he was kissing her. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed back, but he drew away, until they were no longer touching. 

“Fuck. I’m sorry, Nat.”

“Why?” Natasha asked. She had hardly been an unwilling participant in the kiss.

He couldn’t look at her. Again. What was he so afraid of?

“You should probably go,” he said. 

Furious tears stinging in her eyes, she left. If Clint didn’t want her, she could easily find someone else.

 

\+ 1

Natasha reviewed her illegal recordings of the base’s security footage. It never hurt to be too careful, and recently she had begun to feel something was wrong with SHIELD. She fast-forwarded through the day, seeing nothing of interest, until the software pinged. Someone had mentioned one of her names. She flicked to the relevant footage, in the SHIELD break room at approximately 9:30 AM.

“I can’t believe you get to work with the Black Widow. God, she’s hot, like really hot,” one of the newbie agents told Clint with a leer.

Clint, being Clint, ignored him and kept drinking his coffee. The SHIELD break room was a place for gossip, but its denizens typically knew better than to disturb Hawkeye.

“You’re not dating, or anything, are you, because I wouldn’t want step on your turf.” The newbie prattled on, oblivious to the throbbing vein on Clint’s forehead.

“I think of her as the little sister I never had,” Clint said, flatly.

The newbie agent finally took the hint and left, but Natasha wasn’t paying attention to the screen. Her blood boiled. _A little sister? Really?_

She stormed over to Clint’s apartment, not bothering to change from her t-shirt and sweats. She knocked on the door, big booming knocks that couldn’t be ignored.

Clint opened the door in purple boxers, hair mussed from sleep.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“A little sister?” she demanded, tapping her foot.

It took a second for Clint to connect the dots. 

“I meant ‘a valued and trusted partner’,” he explained, with an aw-shucks grin.

“I don’t want to be only your partner, Clint,” she said, frustrated beyond belief.

Clint’s grin disappeared.

“C’mon Tash, you know we wouldn’t be good for each other.”

“No, Clint, I don’t know, since we’ve never tried,” she pointed out, voice sharp.

Clint took a cautious look around the hallway, then stepped back to let her in.

“I don’t want to be a conquest, Nat. I get that this is the thrill of the chase for you.” Clint rubbed the back of his neck, as he so often did under stress.

“What?” Natasha had to fight so she didn't shout loud enough to wake the neighbors. “You think this is just about sex?”

“The thing with the lingerie wasn’t that subtle,” Clint pointed out, with the aggrieved air of someone who had thought about that moment a lot.

Natasha reflected on her past seduction attempts, and had to admit he was right. She hadn’t given him any evidence that she wanted a romantic relationship.

“You wouldn’t be a conquest, Clint. If all I wanted was a roll in the hay do you think I would be trying that hard?”

“What are you saying, Nat?” Clint asked, and she couldn’t tell if the emotion is his voice was hope or fear.

“I want to be with you, Clint. I love you.”

Clint’s eyes widened, but he said nothing. The seconds seemed like hours as she waited for his response.

“Does this mean I get to use pet names?” he asked, finally.

Some part of her was disappointed that he hadn’t said it back, but she hadn’t expected to say it herself, either.

“No,” she answered, smiling back at him.

“What about sweetheart? I like sweetheart.”

Natasha cocked her head and pretended to think about it. 

“Hmmm… no.”

Clint put his hands up in mock surrender. “Fine, Tash it is.”

“Good,” she said smugly. “I believe you owe me a kiss.”

He moved closer to her, but didn’t take the final step. His eyes were intent on hers, and she could see the hesitation in his stance.

“If… _when_ I screw this up, I don’t want to lose you; you’re too important,” he said.

“I’m not going anywhere.” 

It was a foolish promise, but she meant it.

“Glad to hear it. Now, where were we?”

He stepped closer, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his skin. Then they moved at the same time, and the kiss was too hard, his stubble scratching her cheek. He tasted slightly of cold pizza, but his lips still sent tremors through her body. She was kissing the man she loved, and it was all going to be all right.


End file.
